The baseball season – the real baseball season – has started earlier than expected.
More than five months remain before the start of the postseason, but the Dodgers have important games coming up.
Such as their game on Wednesday. Or their series finale against the San Francisco Giants on Thursday.
Because a day after they lost their closer, the Dodgers lost their division lead.
A 3-1 defeat to the Giants at Oracle Park on Tuesday erased what remained of what was once a four-game edge in the National League West. The Dodgers are now tied with the San Diego Padres, who refrained from making any significant additions in the offseason as they were up for sale.
The Dodgers survived crises in each of their two recent championship seasons, and they could be on the verge of another with Edwin Diaz expected to be sidelined until after the All-Star break.
Remove Diaz from the equation and the Dodgers more or less have the same bullpen that was responsible for a midseason slump that resulted in them temporarily relinquishing the division lead to the Padres with five weeks remaining in the regular season last year.
Manager Dave Roberts wasn’t about to speak a hypothetical downturn into existence, as he downplayed the possibility that his team was about to be subjected to another gut check.
“I don’t think anyone’s too concerned about the Padres and what they’re doing,” Roberts said. “As far as gut check, I don’t know. It’s still early. Overall, we’re still playing good baseball. I think, right now, it’s just more of a reset, focus on tomorrow and win.”
He’s right, but that’s precisely why these upcoming games are critical. A couple of blown saves over the next handful of days could send the Dodgers crashing the way they did last summer.
But as much confidence Roberts and the front office claim to have in the team’s healthy relievers, the reality is they can’t be certain of how they will finish games. The Dodgers have a number of capable arms, but capable isn’t the same as reliable. And at the moment, who outside of fireman Alex Vesia is reliable?
Before the series opener against the Giants, Roberts was asked whom he expected to receive the majority of save opportunities.
“I would say probably Tanner Scott, if I had to guess,” Roberts said.
“That could change,” he said. “I honestly don’t know. Tanner could pitch in the seventh tonight, and Blake (Treinen) could get the save. So, honestly, it’s kind of day-to-day. It really is.”
As it turned out, Scott pitched the eighth inning with the Dodgers behind by two runs.
Scott struggled as the team’s designated ninth-inning pitcher last season and was expected to be one of the greatest beneficiaries of Diaz’s addition, as it allowed Roberts to deploy him in more favorable situations.
If there was something positive that came out of the loss on Tuesday, it was that the Dodgers showed how they could overcome the loss of Diaz with their starting pitching.
Starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched a hideous first inning, in which he allowed three runs on four hits and a walk. Yamamoto registered the last out of the frame on his 26th pitch, which pointed to this being a short night for him and a long one for the bullpen.
But Yamamoto regrouped. He didn’t give up another hit until the sixth inning and he completed the seventh. From the second inning onward, he threw only 75 pitches.
“I think it shows why he’s the staff ace,” Roberts said.
“As far as where we’re at going forward in this series, I really like us tomorrow,” Roberts said. “Yamamoto saved the bullpen, the bullpen is reset and in a good spot.”
He said in Japanese of the loss of Diaz, “I think these are things that always happen in a season. This happened last year, too, but we all filled in the holes and we managed to win. For example, if I can even pitch one more inning, it might be a small thing in the big scheme of things, but if we can all help fill holes like that, I think it will be good.”
With the season less than four weeks old, Yamamoto didn’t sound overly concerned about the Padres catching up to the Dodgers.
“If we take it one game at a time, I think we’ll win in the end,” Yamamoto said.
“I just don’t think we really concern ourselves with anyone, to be quite honest,” Roberts said. “And that’s the way we should think about things. It’s no disrespect to any team. It’s just that we’ve got to kind of keep our closet clean and play good baseball, and it will take care of itself.”
If the Dodgers do what they’re supposed to do, they should finish ahead of the Padres – and everyone else. That doesn’t mean they won’t be tested in the process.
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